Editorial

The news says the Iraq war is over. We know better. Its rumble and echo resonate through our daily life, our institutions, and our feelings. This is why several of this issue's contributions–our editorial ally Eliot Weinberger's talk to a gathering of poets in New York in February, the OWP alumnus Chris Keulemans' note on watching Saddam's statue topple on his TV in Amsterdam, Alvin Pang's letter from Singapore in late March–are worth (re-)reading. If the web is important for its thought-like speed and instantaneity, it must, like a prosthesis to memory itself, also be used for its capacity to retain an event's aftershock and imprint.

Marc Cholodenko's textflow, parallel in French and English, Jennifer Croft's translations from Polish of Marzanna Kielar's new poems, and Hédi Kaddour's poetry introduced in its move from French into English by Marylin Hacker are here to be heard stereophonically, with one ear tuned to each language, turned toward its territory.

Russell Valentino frames a small stack of correspondence that x-rays a couple of lives lived out in the city of Mostar, about halfway between Sarajevo and Beograd.